Tag Archives: creative writing

Poet

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Writing

My earliest memories of writing are poems.

My mother claims she was so proud of me when, at a very young age, I wrote a story that was slightly nonsensical but did have a beginning, middle, and end. But my first real memory of putting words together is sitting at our computer (in the 80s! My parents were on the ball!), typing up a poem I had written for my second-grade class.

In second grade, I went to a magnet elementary school and I had the most amazing teacher ever. She didn’t believe in homework. My creative spirit thrived in her classroom.

It was an assignment, that poem, and I recall it was about the wind flowing through a house. I’m certain I remember that much from rereading it many times; a copy exists in my scrapbook at my grandparents’ house.

Mom and Dad were so proud that we printed out many of those copies on dot-matrix reams, and relatives received the same faded-gray-ink on paper as Mrs. Hilliard.

In fourth grade, I tackled limericks. My wallpaper-bound book was the only piece of nonfiction in my class. A cross librarian helped me figure out the Dewey Decimal number for it while the rest of the students unshelved every book in the school library.

The limericks are pathetically awful, but my teacher – my most-beloved teacher of all time, Mrs. Titus – poured accolades on me for taking a chance.

I wrote many volumes of fiction during my childhood, including Hanson sagas and a series of stories about little girls named after flowers that I told and retold to my little sister in the car.

But these short poems are the firsts, the beginnings, the earliest times I was called “writer.” The etches on my heart speak poetry.

Before You Hit Publish: Write. Everything. Down. NOW!

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Before You Hit Publish

Many moons ago, I had this blog series called Before You Hit Publish. Honestly, it was meant to be a blog in itself; but when I got pregnant with David (April 2010), all motivation flew out the window. I still don’t trust that I could manage two blogs plus ParentLife. So for the time being, I’d like to return the series to Vanderbilt Wife. It became quite clear to me at Blissdom that helping bloggers become better writers is one of my passions. I hope you’ll read the new posts — and catch up on old ones by clicking on the image above if you haven’t read them.

Boarding Your Thought Train

When you are a writer, one image or one word can strike up a whole boatload of memories in you, just waiting to be unloaded on the page one by one.

If you’re anything like me, though, these triggers come at the most inopportune times. In the car. While you’re talking on the phone. More often than not, when you’re trying to drift to sleep.

It is so important to record enough words that you’ll remember the train of thought in the morning.

I had a post in drafts for literally months — possibly a year or more — that said something like, “Chrysanthemums in Thanksgiving Visitor / writing essay / lions.” I was so glad I grasped onto that thought when I finally had the chance to write it down.

On another scrap of paper, I have written, “Crying in seventh-grade choir // crying at Red Lobster in Chatt.” I haven’t written that yet, but it’s there. The act of writing down the thoughts, even if I can’t find the traces of my crazed cursive, helps cement them in my brain.

large moleskine
source: cutiepiecompany

So buy a notebook and carry it with you everywhere. (Or, you know, maybe you’re fancy and your smartphone can suffice. I don’t have one of those.) Scribble a few words while you’re at a red light. I’ve even written in the dark while half-asleep, hoping that in the morning I’ll be able to read my own writing and make sense.

Then on those days when you are absolutely blank and staring at the screen in front of you? You’ll recall your notebook, cling to one of those rushing trains, and click-clack it on to the virtual paper. It may go somewhere new, or start a whole series, or simply let you release that thought into the air and never mind it again.

Whatever comes, it’s content, practice, and writing. Now go write.

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Reading Like a Writer

Do you have any old journals or diaries laying around? Pick up one and read a few pages. Try not to shudder too much at how repulsive that guy you liked ended up being, or how pathetic it was how you chased after him and got your heart squished like a bad tomato. Instead, let a memory simmer. See where it takes you, and write something based on it.

If you don’t have an old journal, a very old blog post or even e-mail will do. Let me know in the comments what you come up with and a link if you decide to post about it.

On Writing, and Fear

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Writing = Breathing
source: joeflood

I want to write, but I am crippled.

I am afraid I don’t have a story. All I have wanted all my life is to write a book, and I don’t know if there is one inside of me.

I read what I have written and I hate it. It’s too much truth … too many people who could claim libel for finding themselves in my so-called tale.

I’m afraid that in so many years of blogging I’ve lost the ability to talk about anything but myself.

I write magazine articles: recrafted stories of others, dictated to me and simply made palatable. I write blog posts: a messy conglomeration of stories, recipes, wonderings, life.  Some of them are good and interesting, but nowhere in there lies a true tale anyone would want to read from start to finish.

I want to write Matlida. I want the stories to come to me in dreams and flow onto the pages effortlessly. I want to see the movie of it in my head and move it forward without thinking. Instead, I stare at two sentences and then click delete. It’s all I can do to make myself write anything, fiction or not. An e-mail. A sentence.

And then I wonder if I have the knowledge to write nonfiction. I want to write about our possessive culture, how we think we have rights and everything belongs to us and even Rachael Ray calls it “my cilantro” and “my tacos.” I want to write about God as Father and Jesus as Husband and how those two relationships figure in to the literal relationships we have with earthly fathers and husbands. I want people to read my words and not be able to help being drawn to the bosom of God.

I want the words to come and I’m afraid I’ve lost them in the midst of “Mommy I’m hungry” and wailing and library storytimes and coffee making and having one stinking minute to myself.

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Why I …

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Once upon a time, a long time ago, I hosted a carnival called Family Recipe Fridays.

I loved doing it, aside from:

  • All the people who link their main page, not their post.
  • All the people who didn’t link back.
  • The carnival was not what I thought it would be. I wanted to integrate food and storytelling, two of my passions. And for the most part, people were just linking whatever recipe, like they would to any food carnival. The world did not need another food linky.

I feel my blog has a few true purposes: to move people closer to Christ; to let women know not everyone is perfect–and those who you think are perfect are likely just putting on an act; and to inspire you to write better. That third purpose is why I have the Before You Hit Publish series (which I promise has more coming soon!). 

Starting next Friday, I am beginning a link-up called “Why I.” It’s meant to help you write. About anything. The only requirement is that your post title must start with “Why I.” You can tell a story (“Why I Missed the First Day of Summer Camp in 1992″), defend a belief or practice (“Why I Breastfeed in Public”), or just tell us about your crazy (“Why I Wear Christmas Socks Year-Round”).

(And yes, I could write any one of those posts.)

I hope you’ll link up some Friday with me. You don’t have to write the post on Friday, of course. Write it whenever and just remember to visit on Friday. (Actually, I will do my best to have all posts up at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday night.)

I hope you will link back to Vanderbilt Wife and link to your perma-post. I might delete your link if you don’t. No hard feelings, but it’s just polite!

Do you think you will join in? What’s one “Why I” post YOU could write? Just tempt us with the title!

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Faithfully My Name is Called Each Night*

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Mama’s Losin’ It

For many years but especially since I had children, I’ve asked my parents many times what they did to me when I was a teenager. What did they do to make me not ever want to do anything bad?

I’m not saying I was a perfect or model teenager. But I never fell away from my faith in a drastic way, I did not smoke or drink, or have sex, or really even have a great desire to do any of these things. Yes, I did have the first-child syndrome of wanting to please my parents immensely. But I know many oldest children who did not take the narrow road.

For years, my parents would respond that they had no idea what they did. My mom tended to credit our youth pastor. Sometimes they claimed that strong-willed chilren became teens who didn’t bow to peer pressure.

Only recently did my dad finally respond, “Well, your mom prays. A lot.”

My college. My husband. My children. My ability to stay at home. All things I know my mother has prayed fervently over.

Mom is a bit of a worrier … but she turns that into prayer, the right solution for worry. And I believe she’s taught me to do the same thing. Every joy, every pain, every struggle, almost always my first reaction is to speak to my Jesus.

Oh, how glad I am that He always listens.

One of the most important things I’ve ever learned is that if it concerns me, it concerns Him. He loves me that much.

And I believe it’s a lesson my mother taught me well.

Title is from the song “Mama’s Prayers” by Elizabeth Cook, whom I love!

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Before You Hit Publish, Week 6: Writing a Great First Line

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I read Charlotte’s Web this week, just as I told you I would.

Consequently, I would really like to write an essay on what it is that makes it so amazing, so endearing, so lasting as a child’s novel. I’m not sure, though, anyone would really enjoy that but me. So what I really want to talk about is first lines.

“Where’s Papa going with that axe?”

We all think our own stories are interesting. Why else would we be putting them out here online? If not interesting, at least we find we can pen them in a vibrant manner, one that makes others read and relate to us. And it all starts with that first line.


“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.”

I firmly believe in Anne Lamott‘s theory of, well, we’ll call them crappy first drafts since I have a no-cursing policy here (and in life). It’s OK to simply write what you want. Sometimes you will look at that, and it will be fine, and you can go ahead and publish your draft after a quick scan for typos. Trust me, I’m a blogger. I know that’s how it happens much of the time.

Marley was dead, to begin with.

But I know from experience that 98% of the time, the first draft does not convey everything I want to say. It was journaling, trying to get thoughts on paper. Typing as fast as I can think. Not typing precisely what I want everyone in the world to be able to read. Editing slightly can make a huge difference in a final product. And a dynamic first line is a good place to begin. (Let’s start at the very beginning … a very good place to start!)

It was a pleasure to burn.

So how do you go about crafting a first line? It doesn’t have to be concise, although most of these that I love are. In an age of attention spans the size of a dime, it can’t hurt to use fewer words. The rest of your post might be a book, but draw in with short sentences.

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

All of these first lines I’ve written out involve some sense of intrigue, something to make you read further. If, for instance, Mr. and Mrs. Dursley are so normal, then why does the narrator need to tell you so? Why aren’t there any presents at Christmas? What are they burning? WHY and HOW was it the best and worst of times?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. 

This, which I consider my most honest, most popular, and personal favorite post, starts with a tone of confession. The Pioneer Woman archives are a great place to search on ways to draw in readers with humor and blatant honesty. Here are a few other posts I consider favorites that I feel draw you in right away: My Miracle.  You can’t run before you walk. Recapturing the girl I used to be. On New Year’s Resolutions…

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness …

So there, I suppose, are my tips. 1. Rewrite and edit! 2. Be concise. 3. Study others. 4. Be intriguing.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

First lines in bold are from Charlotte’s Web, Little Women, A Christmas Carol, Fahrenheit 451, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities, and The Metamorphosis.

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Instead of reading this week, I want you to write. I know, novel idea, right? Write a blog post with a first line that sings. Link it up here so we can all read and comment on it! (Don’t forget about the rest of the tips we’ve been studying as well, but concentrate on that first line.) I promise I will do the same. Let’s see what we can conjure up.

I am pretty sure this is my favorite post of this year, so I’m linking it to Works for Me Wednesday: Favorite Posts Edition at We are THAT Family! 

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29 Percent Isn’t Half Bad

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The empty Book

In 2007, I decided I wanted to try to do NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month. My fingers were itchy to write, something I hadn’t done seriously since college. My brain needed something to distract itself from the intense desire to conceive that was not being fulfilled at that time.

So I went from crocheting like a maniac to writing like a maniac. (I’ve never gone back to crochet, as much as I love it.) Despite having a rather debilitating car accident on October 30–and not leaving the hospital until Halloween–I had a brand-new laptop with me on the couch on November 1 and started to write my big novel.

I loved pounding out words. I’ve had stories trapped in my head for as long as I can remember; my mom boasts I wrote my first story around age 5 and she was so proud because it had a beginning, middle, and end.

The first tale I tried to spin, however, was not my own. Try as I might, I could not write the novel stemming from my uncle’s dream. The story was fantastic; my point-of-view was not.

So I started again, halfway through the month. I had no qualms that I would actually finish the requisite 50,000 words, but I remember the freeing feeling of sitting in Panera, hacking away on a story that was mine.

My “novel” has about 14,500 words, and I would say 90% of them were written in November 2007. Reading it now, I fear there is too much of me in the main character and too little imagination. Too many real-life people drawn in. I have too little experience being a single adult to write from that perspective (although my sister has lent me a plethora of tales).

I still want to finish it.

Really, I think my true talent is for creative non-fiction: writing what’s happened in real life in an interesting (and in my case, somewhat humorous) way. But my heart yearns to finish a novel. Because that is an accomplishment. Because it’s what I have wanted to do my entire life.

With as much time as I waste online, I should have 10 novels written by now.

Do you have a childhood dream that can’t be stomped? Would you write a book or even try?

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The Art of Losing is TOO Hard to Master, Elizabeth Bishop!

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I can picture her, red curls, wide a-lined skirt, a farm girl turned city girl turned who-even-knows at Ohio State. He’s an older student, returned from the war, dark hair, light eyes, a twinkle of mischief as he calls the square dance, trying to trip up the frantic dancing adolescents.

She’s approached and consents to a dance with someone who subsequently trips all over himself. She’s too nice to point out that he’s stepping on her feet and trying to promenade the wrong way. From the corner of her eye, she notices the man calling the moves eying her, one eyebrow raised at the jerky movements of the young man at her side.

His time up, he meanders to her side, cutting in deftly and leaving the bespectacled two-left-feeter to the side. They twirl, allemande, bow.

Breathless, he gets her a glass of pink punch and asks her to take a walk outside. He boasts of war stories, of snatching a Nazi armband from the inside of a German church, of fixing tanks and reading books in French. He’s going home to see his mother this weekend for Easter (oh so gentlemanly), but he’ll meet up with her at church on Sunday night.

Oh sure, she thinks. She’s heard that one before. She rolls her eyes when he’s not looking and goes on with her holiday weekend, observing the holy holiday and sunny April with fellow students. 

She’s standing in the pew, singing, and feels a presence slip in next to her. It’s him. He came! Her heart skips a little beat and she listens to his strong tenor voice mixing with her sweet soprano.

They are married in November.

*

After visiting with my grandma this weekend, who is likely dying, I could think of nothing but this sweet story she shared of how she met my grandpa. We lost him in June. To lose her will be devastating.

If you don’t know the poem I’m referencing in the title, you can read it here.
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Give Us This Day

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It is a huge kitchen. Grandpa’s cactus display is under the window, next to Grandma’s collection of decorative spoons. Grandma has everything in its exact place: all of the cups and bowls, the Grapenuts in a see-though container in the pantry, the “Give us this day our daily bread” cross-stitch on the wall. There is a pile of the Dayton Daily News on a stool under the light switch.

The linoleum floor is fun to slide across in socks, much more than at home, because Grandma never gets angry with you for doing it. And you slide right into the counter with the candy jar. With 15 grandchildren running around the house at various times, the jar needs constant refilling: Werther’s, root beer barrels, peppermints, caramels, and cinnamon discs all take their turns jumping in and mostly out of the big glass container.

Most of our conversations take place at the large, oval table, which fits four rolling chairs perfectly. Why rolling chairs, with that many kids around, is beyond me; but they never ceased to amuse me and always earned me a reprimand from one of my parents. At dinner, my little sister Ashley and I were placed in boring folding chairs, while the adults got to savor the entertainment of the rolling ones. What fun could they get out of them? Their feet touched the floor.

Sometimes the table was spread with newspapers, other times with an array of food that one of my grandparents–never both–had spent all afternoon preparing. When I was there, it was often Grandma’s lasagna; the dish never tasted so good when made by someone else. After a few years of having dinner on the couch while watching “Supermarket Sweep” with my parents and sister, eating at a table was a delicious treat, where discussion could be shared and we got to pray before we ate. I was often asked to pray by my parents at my grandparents’ house, and there has not been one time that I have prayed aloud when Grandma hasn’t said, “Maybe someday I’ll be able to pray out loud. I’m just too scared.”

Although Grandpa helped cook in this linoleum paradise, it was Grandma’s domain. She knew every fraction of an inch, which pot was used for which dish–sometimes taking it to the extreme. One Black Friday, my mom, sister, and I returned to collapse at the kitchen table with our bags just to encounter my dad frowning and grouchy, grumbling under his breath. “She wouldn’t let me touch anything,” he murmured to my mom. “She followed me around the kitchen.” Mom just laughed.

When we sit at the table, Grandma and I are always across from one another, a physical remembrance of the difference between an “eternal optimist” and a woman barely 65 who is mourning her own death in advance. One week, she is complaining about the stacks of pictures they bring back each year from their summer work at Yellowstone National Park.

“You kids will just throw them away when we die anyway,” she fusses to my mom. “We should just do it for you now.” Mom sighs and ignores her, and I stifle a laugh. After years of being teary when Grandma and Grandpa would yell at each other, I gave it up and allowed myself to be amused by their self-imposed misery. That same afternoon, I drag out a new discovery to the kitchen table: a box of old pictures from the cabinets in their pink guest room.

Shuffling through the old photographs and scraps of newspaper articles, I am astonished to find a blown-up picture of two teenagers sitting on a car hood, glowing in the sun and looking like 1940s movie stars.

“Grandma!” I hold up the photo, and she gives it a quick peek. “Was this you?”

“Aww, gawsh. We were kids. Our senior picnic.” She goes back to the salad for dinner, chopping carrots with the same gentle motion as always.

I can’t stop staring at the picture. “You look so glamorous! Grandpa was a hottie!” Grandma blushes. “Can I have it?”

She looks perplexed that I would even ask such a thing. I can see her mind split in half: one on hand, it is a piece of trash from her childhood; on the other, she sees a glimpse of herself in the years before her son died and she lost that sparkle.

“Well, I mean, you probably don’t want it, since you’re going to die soon anyway,” I smirk. Mom laughs. Grandma’s jaw drops.

“You asked for that,” my mom says. Grandma’s can’t speak; she just continues slicing the carrot slowly.

I gently put the picture back into its resting place for a few more years, and then run across a smaller version of the snapshot. The wallet-sized photo goes in my purse, to be displayed in my dorm room: my movie-star grandparents. I look at Grandma with a twinkle in my eye and smile. She isn’t just a caricature of a housewife, or a diabetic grandma; she is and was a person. A beautiful young woman in love, just like me. As I look at the picture again, I can see little pieces of my reflection in her black-and-white photo.

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I wrote this in college while in probably my favorite class of all time, Creative Nonfiction. Just came across it and still liked it! So here it is with only minor editing.

Linked up to Your Life, Your Blog.

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